No news is good news?

That phrase came up at dinner today, and we had a discussion about it. When you're waiting to adopt, no news is NOT good news. Then again, maybe it's not bad news, either.

The November consejo came and went with no news from Peru. We have not received confirmation that the documents we submitted last month were satisfactory. We hope the lack of further questions means the committees were satisfied. On the other hand, it's hard to understand why, if the documents were acceptable, they didn't go ahead and assign the children.

Maybe the next consejo (assignment day) will be in just a couple of weeks, since they probably won't want it to be too close to Christmas. Villa Hope has a few families just waiting at this point.

I was able to rearrange my teaching schedule a bit to create some room on either side of Spring Break. So long as we get the referral in December or January, we should be able to travel in mid-March. I appreciate the cooperation of my department and students. The March date would also be after Chrissy's class has finished their standardized testing for the year.

For Want of a Nail

For want of a nail the shoe was lost.

For want of a shoe the horse was lost.

For want of a horse the rider was lost.

For want of a rider the battle was lost.

For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.

And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

No go. Despite our best efforts to gather every required document and send them to Peru to arrive two days before the October consejo, another day slipped in somewhere between Alabama and Lima, and we missed it. Our application was not reviewed again in time for the consejo.

What now? It's looking like we will let things ride for now, hoping to get the referral in November or December, and then request an extension of travel until after Spring semester is over. At least that way, we might not have to pay to update our home study, medical exams, FBI clearances, and other forms. That would make approximately two full years from the time we decided to adopt until we have the children in the U.S. and their adoption re-affirmed here in Illinois.

This is very frustrating. Chrissy has tried to steel herself by just not believing that anything good is going to happen until it does. I generally try to avoid dealing with bureaucracy, because I don't have much patience for systems that don't work right. I can count a half-dozen things that could and should have happened differently such that we would have three more kids by now. But overall, we've gotten service as good as one could expect from all the professionals and agencies involved in the process. Sometimes, things just don't go the way they should. Most people who try to adopt internationally don't have large chunks of the year when they can't take off work, and there's just no way to speed up the process for exceptions.

Maybe one reason it's good that we got to write a letter of intent for specific children is that we now have them in mind as we make decisions. If the adoption were more abstract, we would be tempted to just give up at times. Instead, we can imagine that it might actually work out better for the children to arrive at the very start of the summer, and have a few months when Andrew is home from college and the rest of us are off school before they have to start a busy schedule. If our intended children were not in a good orphanage, we would be more upset, but they're in as good a situation as we could hope.

Reaction and Action

On Tuesday, we learned of the SNA's reaction to our dossier. They considered our application quickly after receiving the letter of intent. There are three committees that review each dossier and can ask questions about legal, psychological, and social issues.

On the legal side, they asked for certain medical reports. Our attorney was able to show them that the reports were in the file, so there might have just been a translation issue. The attorney's staff do not translate every document from English to Spanish, only the main ones.

Based on the experience of other recent applicants, we expected to get some questions on the psychological report. Indeed, they asked for more information from the psychologist. Mostly, this is descriptive information about Chrissy and me, things like "level of self-esteem" and "capacity to deal with challenging situations." The previous report had stayed fairly technical, drawing on the formal assessments we filled out. The new details will be more about our parenting skills.

On the social (home study) side, there were two issues. First, the new administration at SNA has decided on additional tests for communicable diseases. We will all have to have a chest x-ray and have blood drawn again (that's three times since December for most of us, four times for Drew because the lab did the wrong test on his once). Also, there were two forms used to indicate which special needs we would consider. We didn't mark "no" on many things, but the more extensive form was simply summarized into the home study, while the shorter form was included as part of the dossier. Unfortunately, on the shorter form, we marked "no" on something that it turns out the committee thinks may be an issue for the children we are trying to adopt. We don't read it that way, and are not concerned about it, but will resubmit the form with "yes" marked. At this point, we don't expect this will require any changes to the home study itself or review by any US government agency.

Our goal is to get all these reports done and notarized next week, and back to Peru by about Oct. 18. If the next "consejo" for referrals isn't until later in the month, as is typical, we could still get the referral in October. Otherwise, we will have to put a hold on things until after next semester, which would be very disappointing. In fact, we don't know for sure what would happen if we have to tell SNA that we can't move ahead for a while.

There's one other step we've taken to try to avoid further delays. Since Andrew turned 18 after our initial application to the US Customs and Immigration Service, he now needs to be fingerprinted by Homeland Security. We sent in the form a week ago, and expect he will be notified of his appointment (in Indianapolis) by the end of the month. Thanks to the folks on the Yahoo! group Peru-Adopt for a heads-up on this step.

Intent

Yesterday, we submitted our letter of intent to adopt specific children. We are expecting to get the formal referral in October. That would put our travel in November or December. Could we have a Christmas with the whole family together? All six kids?

Yes, that's right. We're planning to adopt three more children. The ones named in our letter of intent are two girls and a boy, ages 6 to 11, from the northern part of Peru. They have moved between a couple of orphanages, but most recently have been living together in the same home with a married couple as houseparents. They are not children we met when we went to Peru, but they have interacted with other American volunteers and orphanage staff. We are not allowed to post names, pictures, or details until after the adoption is final and they are in the US.

As you might imagine, we thought long and hard about whether to adopt a single child, a pair, or the three. In the end, we chose these children for several reasons. First, they are the youngest children for which we are qualified, per our home study. With siblings in place, adopting younger children is often recommended. Second, we like the idea of getting both a boy and a girl, and that combination wasn't available in any sibling group of two. Third, we want to do as much as we realistically can, to help as many children as we can. If necessary, we would adjust other aspects of our lives to make room and time for this many children. Fourth, we believe that parenting three children who are apparently healthy and doing well in school might be no more stressful than parenting two, one of which has an established disability.

We ask for prayer that the process would move as quickly as possible from now on. We have already started to think of these children as ours, and the more time they can spend with us before starting school in January, the better for them.

One nice aspect of the process is that Peru and the agency don't require more fees for multiple children than for one. There are additional costs for medical care, follow-up visits from the social worker, etc. but nothing major. On the positive side, the adoption tax credit applies per child. With three children, we actually expect to be fully reimbursed for all of our adoption expenses through federal tax refunds over the next few years. So far, we haven't done any fundraising to support the adoption, because we know we'll eventually be reimbursed. In a sense, you're supporting the adoptions of our family and others just by working and paying your taxes.

However, the decision to adopt three children will increase our travel costs over what we had planned, and we will be getting some new furniture and educational materials this Fall. If you would like to help financially, my PayPal account is my personal, Cubs-oriented email address. If you don't know it, contact us. I don't want to put it on the blog, to prevent spam. Or, you can just send a check. We promise to spend every dollar on the kids, if nothing else, at least for more Christmas presents!

Dossier is at SNA. We are thankful?

We recently heard that our dossier was translated and submitted to the SNA (National Adoption Secretary) on August 27. It usually takes three weeks for the dossier to go through three committees. Each committee could ask for further information. The most common question is something for the psychologist to answer, as the committees think about how the family would work with children of different ages, etc. It's easy to get impatient at this point, but the questions can usually be answered quickly and it does help make the best match for the child.

Since we will have submitted a letter of intent for a particular child, we hope there won't be any further questions, and our case will proceed quickly. There is a chance that we would be approved prior to the next conference ("consejo"), which is scheduled for September 22. Failing that, an October match seems like a near certainty. At that point, we will apply to the USCIS for clearance on the specific child, which takes about a month. Then we would be able to travel, perhaps over Thanksgiving. I'm not sure if there are any turkeys in Peru, but some arroz con pollo would be very nice!

We are asking some last-minute questions and confirming which children are available before sending our letter of intent. There are a lot of factors to balance, but we seem to be in agreement about what we would like to do, if it's possible. Along with WWJD, I ask myself, WWSD? That is, what would super-dad Steve (Douglas) do?

"I adopted. Why don't you?
Ernie was a little nerd and
Dodie was annoying, but
I loved them anyway."

Stay tuned! We won't be giving out many details about the child(ren) on the blog, but will share some general information.

I'll close with a little My Three Sons trivia:

Q:In the 12th season, when Katie and the triplets stayed with Steve and Barbara, where did Robbie go?

A: To build a bridge in Peru.

Days, Weeks, Months

The schedule of adoption is predictable: one step has to follow another. But the schedule of adoption is unpredictable: it usually isn't clear how long each step will take.

Are we days from adopting? Well, the attorney and the placing agency can use email and phone to alert us immediately if there are any issues in our dossier. We can email responses, even pictures, and send notarized forms by overnight mail. The government adoption professionals can move priority adoptions ahead of all others, and review documents quickly. Committees can decide that the excellent, detailed psychological, health, and financial reports answer all their questions, and move for quick approval. SNA can assign referrals at the meeting next week or soon after. The US Customs and Immigration Service can process the next form in a few weeks. We can get a flight on short notice, paying half of full fare for an adoption fare with an open return date. We could be days from adopting.

Are we weeks from adopting? The attorney could be presented with several dossiers to translate at once. We could have to get new letters, new reports, new clearances that would have to be legalized and translated again. There could be problems with the paperwork for certain children, so that they are not freed for adoption, or need to have their birth certificates reexamined. USCIS could take five weeks to clear us to travel. We could have to wait until we can get a ticket for Alex on the same flight with us. We could meet the children, only to have the Peruvian social worker conclude that we have not bonded enough in the first week, and must stay extra time before completing the adoption in Peru. We could be weeks from adopting.

Are we months from adopting? We certainly hope not. We aren't holding out for some perfect age or type of child. It's not hard saying "yes" to the children we met...it's harder to say "no."

Why are we adopting? Part II

As mentioned in the last post, we want to share some details about how our thinking changed through the process of the adoption. Also, we hope to give enough information to help other people decide whether to pursue adoption in Peru. In this post, I'm going to intersperse the application steps and dates with what we were thinking at the time about who to adopt.

Our interest in Peru adoption began when we traveled to the Hogar de Esperanza orphanage near Trujillo in July, 2009. We began to discuss adoption as a possibility within days of returning home. The first week of August, we were searching the Internet for information and reading other families' adoption stories. Then we started contacting adoption agencies.

When we talked as a family, it became apparent that Chrissy and I were thinking of older children than our boys were. They each suggested someone who was among the youngest children at the orphanage. As parents, we were willing to consider children who were similar in age to our boys. We realized that each of us had a soft spot for someone with whom we had spent a lot of time. For example, on movie night at the Hogar, I had a little girl fall asleep on my lap, so was interested in her and her two siblings. On the field trip to the Moche ruins, Andrew was "buddies" with a boy, and suggested him and his sister. We agreed that we would probably have gotten interested in any child we had spent significant time with, and decided to keep our minds open to whoever was available. However, we also felt it would not work to adopt a girl who was entering her teens, or a boy who was older than Aaron (since that would make him the oldest child in the home because Andrew would be going off to college). A more difficult decision was whether to consider adopting a child with severe disabilities. Any child coming out of poverty and abandonment can have learning and emotional challenges, but there are some dear children at the orphanage who are nonverbal and will not be able to care for themselves even as adults. Although we had experience with children with such disabilities, we decided that at our age, and with other children, we shouldn't try to take in a child with severe disabilities. We did remain open to children with medical problems or minor physical disabilities. As it turns out, nearly every child we identified in our initial family discussions has since been returned to his birth family or adopted.

We knew two families who had adopted from Peru through Villa Hope, out of Birmingham, Alabama. We emailed Villa Hope on August 5, 2009 to request a packet of information. Pat Baldwin replied, and she has been our main contact. Other staffers at Villa Hope explained the paperwork and procedures, and handled the accounting. Villa Hope works through Maria Elena Baldassari as the attorney in Peru.

At the time, we heard about other families who were also working with Villa Hope. A few of the older boys at the Hogar had already been targeted by others. In a couple of cases, there was a letter of intent on file in Peru. For the Waiting Children (> age 5 or with disabilities) in Peru, adoption applicants can specify a particular child they hope to adopt. The letter of intent is a way to explain why you are able to provide the right environment for the child. (The Peruvian government is clear that their goal is to find the right family for the child, not the preferred child for a family.) Partly based on the feedback from Villa Hope, and other people we talked to about their adoption plans, we turned our attention away from the older children at the orphanage, and began to think more about larger sibling groups, who are also hard to place.

The first thing Villa Hope did that was a big help was to offer to clear up any concerns about health issues before we formally started the process. Due to our age and medical background, we might not have been approved to adopt in certain other countries. We provided some information about medications and medical history, and they sent it to Maria Elena to check with MIMDES/SNA. (MIMDES is the government department in charge of social welfare for women and children, and SNA is the national secretary for adoption). This informal advice was provided before we paid anything or began a home study. Everything checked out OK with SNA, but there are no guarantees until the final dossier is approved. We got the go-ahead to proceed in mid-October. (This is a step that probably cost us about a month in the process, and not everyone would have to do it.)

Next, we needed an Illinois agency to do the home study. We checked first with an agency recommended by someone at our church. However, they were not Hague-accredited, so we could not use them for Peru. Next, we inquired with a large agency that had been used by some of our friends who adopted multiple times. That agency had a social worker nearby, but they have a policy of not doing home studies that will be used by other agencies. So, we finally located The Baby Fold, located about an hour from us. Our neighbors had used them for an open, domestic adoption of an infant. Our social worker is Lara Raper. We first contacted The Baby Fold on September 15, 2009 and met with Lara beginning in November, after compiling necessary paperwork.

In our initial paperwork for Villa Hope, we had checked off a number of health issues that we would consider in a child. For instance, we said we would consider a child who is HIV-positive, whose mother had been diagnosed as mentally ill, or who had been abused. This surprised the agency somewhat, as most applicants apparently just check "no" on everything in an effort to get the healthiest child possible, while recognizing they might later be asked to consider a child with one or more of the items. Suddenly there was a new factor in our thinking. What if we were the only ones willing to adopt some child who was only stuck in the system because she has HIV? Should we be willing to look outside the orphanage we visited to consider other children who might be hard-to-place, but who fit our criteria? Pat Baldwin helped us to understand the situation. As of Fall, 2009, there were only a few waiting children in Peru with HIV, many more with an unknown parental history or who had definitely been exposed to drugs and violence on the street. However, Pat wrote "All of them need homes so it is good to look for a child that fits in well with your family."

We began our home study training by going to Normal, IL to the offices of The Baby Fold. Our first session was November 7, 2009 and our home study was complete on March 24, 2010. It cleared the State of Illinois in early April. We met several times with Lara, and she interviewed the boys and inspected our home. We learned general facts about adoption, discussed our parenting styles, and took in a lot of information about adopted children and their emotional and physical health. In December, 2009, we began a series of on-line courses specifically geared to those adopting older children (i.e., not babies) internationally. It was good to have the mix of detailed, authoritative presentations on-line with the face-to-face discussions with the social worker. We completed the on-line courses February 11, 2010. The period from November through February was an intense time of gathering paperwork. It felt like we were working on the adoption every day (or every evening). This is the time when if we were not serious about the adoption, we would just have given up. The best part was sitting together doing the on-line courses and having long discussions about parenting. It truly benefited our family even aside from the adoption.

One goal of all the education is to make sure you understand the challenges of adopting a child from an orphanage. As an elementary-school teacher, Chrissy was familiar with most of the material on childhood development, but it was all new to me. It was amazing to learn how just the inability to crawl freely can inhibit a child's ability to develop normal brain function. There's a lot I took for granted in having three healthy children. With this information, taking on two or three children at a time seemed like a bigger task. We asked to see some description of the children available for adoption. Pat sent us an abbreviated list of several sibling groups culled from the official Waiting Children list. From just the names, ages, and brief descriptions, we could see that there were many children who were behind in school, or whose emotional and physical status might signal additional needs. We requested and received more detail on two families. In one, the youngest child was below the age listed on our home study, so we found we could not have pursued that referral without months of delay. The other was a group of three children. We decided not to write a letter of intent, and to think more about whether we could actually handle three. We also hoped some more children would come available from Hogar de Esperanza, and were willing to wait.

Once the home study was complete, we began work on the dossier. There was not quite as much paperwork to do, but some of the tasks (e.g., getting employment verification letters, getting a psychologist's report) required us to contact other people and work to their schedule. So we did slow down a little in this phase. We might have been able to save a few weeks. On the other hand, government approvals moved rather quickly. Our home study passed through the State of Illinois in a matter of days. Our USCIS application went in on May 4, we were fingerprinted on June 2, and had our I-797 on June 7. Then we scheduled our physical exams and our full dossier was at Villa Hope by July 2.

We used a psychologist who had previously prepared a report for Peru. Some aspects had changed, either because of the Hague process or just changes from SNA. The psychologist met with each of our boys, and administered several tests, then met with us. Her main recommendation was that we limit ourselves to two new children. She was somewhat amazed at how different Chrissy and I are, and we said our marriage isn't perfect, but it's worked for 20 years! Thankfully the psychologist is in our college town, so she has worked before with dull academics like me. Early in the summer, we learned that additional children at "our" Hogar had been changed from "state protection" status to "under investigation for abandonment" status, the legal precursor to being added to the waiting children list. We decided to focus on those children, and hope and pray a couple of the younger ones would come available soon. However, we remain open to a match with other children who might have characteristics that are acceptable to us, but make them hard to place.

Villa Hope got the documents in our dossier "legalized" and submitted it to the Peruvian consulate. After one typo-related glitch, that was approved and returned, and sent on down to Lima. Maria Elena and her staff are in the process of translating some of the documents into Spanish for official filing. We could hear of final approval any day now, or SNA could request new information, which might push things back several weeks. There are numerous sibling groups waiting, and in July, only single children were placed. Villa Hope had three referrals recently, and heard from SNA that they are eager for more families willing to adopt multiples. All this gives us hope for getting a referral very soon after our dossier is finally approved.

Why are we adopting?

Everyone's adoption story is different. There are three parts to our reasons for adopting: the philosophical, the personal, and the procedural. The philosophical approach answers the question, "Given your view of life, why would you choose to adopt?" The personal account tells "What experiences and emotions led you to adopt?" The procedural covers "How did your thoughts about adoption change through the year-long process?" This post will cover the first two.

Philosophical

We are Christians. Put simply, that means we accept as a historical fact that a man named Jesus actually came back to life after dying a couple thousand years ago. Amazing, yes. Unbelievable to some. But based on historical and experiential evidence, we think it's true. And given the records of what he taught, this power of life over death has important implications. First, the reason the universe exists is to enact love. Second, we are capable of love. By love, we mean actively improving the conditions of life for another person. This is often accompanied by warm emotions and reciprocation, but can also involve self-sacrifice and pain. Third, becoming a person full of love at all times means expressing love toward whomever we meet.

Now, it's not possible to know everyone you meet well enough to love them effectively. You can start by respecting "your neighbor" and being willing to communicate with him or her. But we are finite beings. We can only love in part, and only love a few people at a time intensely. For the rest, we just try to help to the extent we can, and not do anything to harm them. When it comes to our children, we try to do whatever is best for them, not what makes us feel proud or comfortable. (Note: I said we try.)

Therefore, someone could love perfectly well without ever adopting or having any children. We have had natural-born children, and enjoyed our relationships with them. In fact, our motivation to go to Peru was mainly to create a memory with them, and to serve together to help people clearly in need. However, after meeting the children at the Hogar de Esperanza orphanage, we each became aware that we could personally and directly love one or more of these children as part of our family. In our philosophy, you can choose to love whomever you want most deeply, but there is a call to love the person you happen to run across, to be a “Good Samaritan” to your “neighbor.” We recognized that we were among only a few people with the capacity for adoption who would ever get to spend a week with these particular children.

Personal

Our awareness of adoption was rooted in past experiences with adoptive families and children with special needs. When we were first married, I was working at an agency that provided services for people with mental disabilities. We talked at that time about possibly adopting a child with Down Syndrome in the future. Later, in Ohio, we volunteered with children with autism and multiple disabilities through our church, including Sunday sessions and a summer day-camp. While living in Louisiana, we became aware of a particular girl in an orphanage in Eastern Europe, where one of our college friends was working. We inquired about her status, but she had been moved to another location already. Finally, in Illinois, we knew a family who had adopted multiple children from Asia. They received word about another possible child, and we talked as a family about whether we could help, but again, our involvement wasn’t needed.

We had reached a point where we no longer thought about having or adopting another baby. We saw many examples of adoption around us. We know families who have adopted children from infancy to teens, sibling groups or multiple children from different countries, boys and girls, children who struggle to learn English and those who excel in school and sports. We had just moved on to another stage in life, even though we were just in our mid-40s.

On the other hand, we were looking for ways to help children in our community that faced difficulties. Chrissy went back to teaching full-time, and also started mentoring teen moms in our town. Both of these points of contact helped us to understand the situation of children growing up in poverty or without resident parents. Then, in 2008-9, we had two periods in which different people moved into our house for a time; one, a single woman from our church who was temporarily displaced, and the other, a mom and son we knew from where we used to live, who were relocating to our area. We learned that we could adjust to having someone else live with us.

So, how did we feel about the children in Peru? Right away, they made us feel welcome and appreciated. Then, through the week, several of them attached themselves to us, sitting on our laps, holding our hands, pulling us over to the playground. Although their backgrounds are difficult, and many of them face serious challenges, we did not spend a lot of time thinking about their tough lives. The volunteers and staffers told us a few stories, generally without identifying a specific child, so we could appreciate the kind of things they’d been through. But we just enjoyed having fun with them and saw that they were like any children in the US. We realized their great potential, and the fact that it would be hard to reach that potential where they are. At least for the boys in the family, we didn’t necessarily feel like we “loved” the children in that short time, but we began to care about them, and what would happen to them. When we got home, and started talking about adoption, each of us had one or two children that we hoped would be available. It turned out that those were whichever children we had each spent the most time with—so we thought we could grow to care for any of them, once we got to know them.

Our desire is to help a child reach his or her potential to be a loving member of a family, and someone who can exhibit their talents and personality in their work, friendships, and service to others.

--Doug

Welcome!

This blog is to record the adoption process for the Miller family of Champaign, Illinois. We are currently a family of five, and looking to add more. I'm Doug, an assistant professor in the business school at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. My wife, Chrissy, is a fourth-grade teacher at Robeson Elementary in Champaign. My three sons are Andrew, Aaron, and Alex. But that's just for now...

In July, 2009, we all went to the Hogar de Esperanza ("Home of Hope") near Trujillo, Peru. After returning, we began to discuss the possibility of adopting one or more of the wonderful children we had met at this orphanage. Our family had discussed adoption before, but always thinking about infants. We had gotten too old to add a baby, but seeing older children in need of a home made us recognize that we could still adopt.

It's now July, 2010, and we have completed all the pre-adoption training and paperwork. Our dossier is due to be shipped off to Peru this week. Tonight at one of our family meetings about adoption, we discussed the possibility of this blog to help other families who are interested in adoption, and for our friends and family to follow our progress over the next few months.

We will write a few posts to explain why we chose to adopt, the process, and decisions that we made along the way. Then, when we get a placement, we won't be able to share much detail about our newest child(ren) for a while, but we will update travel plans and progress. After the adoption is complete, we'll post a few pictures and that will be the end of the blogging. Then, if you want to continue to stay in touch via email or Facebook, please contact me.

You are welcome to become a follower of the blog so you can post comments. Thank you for your interest in our family!